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Leather, tulle and silk may be the stuff of runway dreams, but when it comes to most U.S. apparel, cotton is king. Almost 75% of clothing sold in the U.S. contains at least some of the tufty fiber, according to the 2010 Cotton Inc. Retail Monitor, a survey of mass retailers. Farmers in this country will grow 8.16 billion pounds of cotton during the current growing season. Add China, India and the 100-plus other countries that cultivate cotton, and the yield is 62 billion pounds produced annually worldwide. That's a lot of blue jeans, T-shirts and underwear. It's a $40-billion industry that touches the lives of nearly every human on the planet. Many of us — subconsciously...

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Leather, tulle and silk may be the stuff of runway dreams, but when it comes to most U.S. apparel, cotton is king. Almost 75% of clothing sold in the U.S. contains at least some of the tufty fiber, according to the 2010 Cotton Inc. Retail Monitor, a...

"The Hunger Games"is a visual smorgasbord of a movie, a cast of hundreds dressed in everything from utilitarian garb with Depression-era grit to glam-gone-grotesque Gaga get-ups inspired by the latest haute couture. Then there's that dress...

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the...